Howdy

Been a while.  I'd love to say there's a reason I haven't been updating besides that I haven't felt like updating, but there isn't.  I was planning to post a race report after the 12 hour race, but decided to wait until I got my finisher stuff, which they said would be mailed to us, to do the post.  Well, I'm still waiting... 

Long story short, it was a bit of a rough day, both in terms of the course and the weather, which was warm and humid.  I had hoped to do 50 miles and settled for 40.  Many people I spoke to on the course also revised down their goals.  I wound up finishing fourth in my age group (woo hoo!) which I take to mean I'm one of the few women my age stupid enough to have stayed out there long enough to do 40 miles.  But so be it.

I'm now tapering for what might be my last race of the year, a 50K out in the same area as the other races I've been doing, meaning in the hill country.  This is supposed to be quite the challenging course and there is a time limit on it; for a change, my goal for this race will be to finish within the time limit, which is, one would think, a generous 7.5 hours.  If this were a flat country road race, it would be no problem (weather issues not withstanding) but it's not; reportedly there's over 7,000 feet in elevation gain.  Plus, I'm still making plenty of rookie mistakes out there (which is fair, I guess, this being my first full year of trail racing).  If I do my best and make no serious errors AND the weather is as currently predicted (a GLORIOUS forecast high of only 60 degrees F), I should make it.  If not - eh, learning experience. 

However, also, if not - well, I know myself, and I don't like ending things on a bad note, so a fail here would leave me wanting to redeem the season somehow.  I'm not sure what that would look like, and hopefully I won't have to find out!